My "good little place" in Manhattan: the American Wing Café at the MET. Caramel Apple cupcake

There's a movie (I don't remember the name) where the  main character interpreted by Meg Ryan says that, when she visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, for the first time in her life she felt she was exactly where she wanted to be. That is to say she was in peace and happy. This positive sensation happened to me too when I was in New York and that's why I spent a lot of Friday and Saturday evenings there (the museum is opened till 9 pm in the weekend). What gave me this sense of serenity was to be surrounded by such magnificent works of art, the eternal beauty of those masterworks. Among them I felt I was safe and lucky to be in such a privileged place. The museum is so big (more than 2,000,000 square feet) that it takes several times to visit it, if you want to see its collections and exhibitions in quite an accurate way. Anyway, there was also another reason for my frequent visits to the Met: I loved to stop at the American Wing Café to have a coffee or tea with a pastry. The America Wing is that area of the museum where American paintings and sculpture are on permanent exhibition. The Café is located on the park side of the Charles Engelhard Court, overlooking a monumental collection of marble and bronze  large-scale sculptures by American master artists. I took some pictures of what I could see sipping my cappuccino, reading some poetry, writing, meditating and relaxing, while enjoying such wonderful environment. The designers who mounted the exhibition did a great job playing with lights and creating suggestive shadows that give the sculptures even more magnificence. 

Fragilina, Attilio Piccirilli (1866-1945)

The Struggle of the two Natures in Man, George Grey Barnard (1863- 1938)

Mexican Girl Dying, Thomas Crawford (1814 - 1857)

The Libyan Sibyl, William Wetmore Story (1819 - 1895)

Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, Randolph Rogers (1825- 1892)

Evening, Frederick Wellington Ruckstull (1853- 1942)

Memory, Daniel Chester French (1850 -1951)

Not only my artistic appetite was satisfied...At the American Wing Café I found my favorite cupcake, that I enjoyed each time I went there. It was a Caramel Apple (from Crumbs company), an apple cinnamon cake with apple pie filling, frosted with vanilla cream and drizzled with rich caramel. At home I tried to recreate my Met "ecstatic" moment making a simpler copy of the cupcake (without filling). Here the recipe:

Caramel Apple cupcake

(makes 12 cupcakes)

180 g white flour

100 g brown cane sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 sachet vanillin

1 teaspoon powder cinnamon

100 g butter

2 eggs

2 tablespoons milk

2 apples 

Vanilla Caramel cream:

125 g vanilla icing sugar

25 g butter

15 ml milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

caramel syrup

Peel the apples, leave out the core and grate them (you can sprinkle a little lemon juice to avoid fruits darkening). In a bowl sift all dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, vanillin, cinnamon and mix them well. In another bowl work the softened butter with cane sugar till you get a frothy compound. Add then eggs (one by one) and milk. Mix together the dry and wet ingredients, add apples and stir well with a wood tablespoon. Pour the mixture into 12 paper liners until 2/3 full and bake in preheated oven at 170 C for about 25 minutes. Prepare the cream by mixing together butter (softened), icing sugar, milk and vanilla extract till you get a soft compound. Distribute the cream on the cooled cupcakes and decorate with caramel syrup.